Variety Says Class Action May Stop RIAA Suits

NewYorkCountryLawyer writes "Variety reports that Andersen v. Atlantic, the class action which has been brought against the RIAA in Oregon may 'ultimately force the organization to drop or dramatically change the way it uses its principal weapon in the fight against online piracy"'. The RIAA responded to Variety saying that 'We are confident that (Andersen's) claims have no merit....We look forward to presenting our arguments in the next few weeks to the court about why this case should be dismissed. In all our cases, we seek to follow the facts and be fair and reasonable in resolving pending claims.' p2pnet opines that Hollywood's interest in the suit bodes ill for the RIAA."

Comments

Re:Yeah!

[xtracto]

Persisting, the RIAA began to harass Andersen's 10-year-old daughter, demanding a deposition from her and even posing as a relative when calling her school to get access to her.

Wow, wouldn't just this issue alone be enough to sue those companies? harrasing a minor or something like that? I am sure you guys have some kind of law that punishes that ("think of the children").

Also, I found the following quote funny:
Ray Beckerman, an attorney who has represented defendants in illegal downloading lawsuits filed by the RIAA.
As I am not a native English speaker, I read that as "The illegal lawsuits, with the subject of downloading" or, illegal downloading-lawsuits and my first thought was, yeah, they surely are illegal indeed.

Why settle?

[Otis2222222]

From TFA:

"If class action is certified, it's more likely that the record companies would settle," said Ronnie London, an attorney versed in class-action law with the firm of Davis Wright Tremaine, which specializes in communications law. Just once I'd like to see a plaintiff in one of these cases refuse to settle (witness: Sony rootkit fiasco). I'd like to see some actual, real sanctions be placed, because a settlement is likely to be a bunch of crap like a couple of free downloads or something equally worthless.

Re:I just don't understand the pro-file sharing ar

[NewYorkCountryLawyer]

Wow, your comments show a huge lack of understanding of this issue. Just to clarify, the issue here is not copyright violations, it is about how the RIAA has been conducting itself for years now. This class action has nothing to do with cheering on copyright violation, it's about putting an end to the RIAA's illegal and borderline illegal abuse of the American courts. Copyright abuse is a two-way street and by all accounts the RIAA has acted as improperly as any copyright violator. Well you've got that right. From my experience the majority of people the RIAA targets are people who did not do any file sharing of any kind. The RIAA's "expert" has admitted that he doesn't have a clue as to what 'individual' may have been doing the file sharing, and that his methods and MediaSentry's methods haven't been subjected to any of the testing that is required for them to be usable as evidence in Court, yet in my presence, a couple of months ago, an RIAA lawyer stood up in court and said to the judge that MediaSentry's investigator "detected an individual downloading and uploading".

Re:I just don't understand the pro-file sharing ar

[Technician]

Why is it too much to ask that if you like the CD, you pay the money?

It's simple. I'm out of money. Instead of $15 for a 40 minute CD, I bought 4 120 minute DVDs for $20 at Blockbuster.

It is a matter of value. I don't have tons of money to buy both the value products and the expensive low value products. DRM on many CDs has lowered their value even further. If you can't put it on your MP3 player, it's useless. If you find this out ofter the sale, opened items are not returnable. I learned early on to not buy a pig in a poke.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pig_in_a_poke

Many Jewel cases on retail shelves don't contain a real Phillips standard CD and are not clearly labeled.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Defective_by_Design

For a prime example of overpricing the easy to duplicate back catalog music is still at high prices as though they are still paying for production costs which were paid for long ago.

http://www.amazon.com/Beatles-White-Album/dp/B0000 02UAX

The outrageous price is simply from created shortage, not by any costs of production.

Instead of buying this overpriced item, I can buy 4 movies that took orders of magnitude more to produce.

Care to do a cost of production comparison for the Beatles White Album and the movies Monsters Inc, Cars, Toy Story, Fiddler on the Roof, Finding Nemo, and other large cast or high tech creations.

When comparing value, the White Album costs more and has a much less talent and production complexity. At the current value/price points, I'm simply buying movies instead of albums. They don't have the value.

Re:I just don't understand the pro-file sharing ar

[Ajehals]

If there was no copyright then there would be no need for the GPL. If there was no copyright then the GPL could not exist and the aims behind the GPL (That a people should be free to use, improve and then re-distribute GPL software) would fail. They would fail because all the code that is currently GPL would be taken up by companies, modified, improved (or just re-branded) and redistributed, in closed source form.

DRM would be even more prevalent and probably more effective, it would be seen as the only way to make money from any idea (software, artistic work etc..), Oh and that GPL material that had been closed sourced? that would be sat under layers of DRM too. Arguing for the total abolition of copyright is not a good and positive thing, not unless you could provide some other legislative or social mechanism to address the damage done.

The problem with current copyright legislation is the length of copyright and the terms associated with it - see one of my previous posts for more,